Visiting Faculty and Scholars

The Center for West European Studies and the European Union Center of Excellence are pleased to help host a number of UW visiting scholars and faculty based in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. These visitors enrich the European Studies program and the UW's academic environment through their teaching, research, and outreach. The centers also regularly host European Union Fellows, EU officials based at the UW for up to one year. The Fellows teach UW undergraduate courses on EU themes, and give frequent outreach talks at other universities and community organizations throughout our region. The Centers can host a limited number of visiting scholars at any time. We only accept applications from scholars whose research overlaps with UW and Center resources, and who would be coming under the auspices of a major research grant program (e.g. Fullbright) which includes full funding. Neither Center is able to fund post-doctoral or other research/teaching positions.

Current Visitors:

Dr. Arista Cirtautas is a Visiting Lecturer in European Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the UW's REECAS program. She is a specialist on EU enlargement and East European politics and government. She was based at the University of Virginia before coming to the UW.

Dr. Nektaria Klapaki is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Hellenic Studies through the Onassis Foundation Professorship. Her B.A. was from the University of Crete, Department of Philology in Classics with distinction, and her M.A. & Ph.D. (2006) degrees were from the University of London, King’s College, the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. Thus her breadth of training and interests coincides with our Hellenic Studies Program in combining Ancient, Byzantine and Modern Greece. During her academic study Dr. Klapaki regularly won scholarships and prizes and she has made a large number of presentations, published in important journals and currently is revising her doctoral research for publication as a book. She has offered courses, both small and as large as 150 students, at the University of Thessaly and the Hellenic Open University.

Frank Wendler is the DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the UW Department of Political Science and the Jackson School of International Studies. His primary research interest is the study of European integration, with a particular focus on the evolution of parliamentary democracy, party politics and public debate in the context of governance in the European Union. In his current research he compares parliamentary debates on European integration in Austria, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Wendler published a monograph on the evolution of participatory modes of governance in the field of EU Social Policy entitled "Soziales Europa und demokratische Legitimität" (2005, Nomos) and has edited the volume Food Safety Regulation in Europe (2007, Intersentia, with Ellen Vos). Further he has published in a number of peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of European Integration, European Integration Online Papers and German Politics. At UW, Frank Wendler teaches courses on the European Union, the Europeanisation of political systems, and parliamentary politics in the EU.

Christian Thauer is Fritz Thyssen Fellow at the University of Washington. He received his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Before coming to UW, Christian was lecturer in International Relations at the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and Security Policy at the Free University in Berlin. In his dissertation Christian inquires under which conditions firms engage in corporate social responsibility. The thesis applies transaction cost economics and the concept of asset specificity to analyze intra-firm relationships and dynamics as factors for corporate social responsibility in the textile and automotive industries in South Africa and China. Based at UW, Christian is working on his new project on "Effective Business Governance? Local Communities and the Provision of Common Goods by Business" for which he will conduct field research in Brazil and South Africa.